-Caveat Lector- -----Original Message----- From: jean hudon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 1999 1:09 PM To: Nancie Belle Subject: FWd Enemies of the State: Authoritarian vs. Libertarian Internet Visions +Nukes, Deterrence and China Subj: Enemies of the State Date: 8/24/99 3:01:34 AM Eastern Daylight Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> (Activist Mailing List) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Activist Mailing List - http://get.to/activist Insight Magazine August 20, 1999 By James P. Lucier Enemies of the State In a clash between the authoritarian state and the libertarian vision, the Clinton administration is seeking draconian control of computers and encryption. ************ Virginia's soft-spoken four-term Republican congressman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, may come out of a no-nonsense town in the Blue Ridge, but he has taken on virtually the entire defense establishment, the intelligence community and even the FBI with his bill HR850, the Security and Freedom through Encryption Act, or SAFE. It is a simple concept, and it has 258 cosponsors in the House. What SAFE would do is guarantee every American the freedom to use any type of cryptography anywhere in the world and allow the sale of any type of encryption domestically. Not such a big deal, is it? How many Americans go around writing secret messages in disappearing ink after they grow up? . . . . Actually, it is one of those edge-defying, generation- splitting, turn-the-world-upside-down moments in history. It is a struggle between two different visions of American society. One side sees the private use of encryption as a way to safeguard the records and property of U.S. citizens from the prying eyes of computer hackers, thieves, terrorists and the U.S. government. The other side is the U.S. government, which sees itself as the guarantor of security in the newly discovered land of cyberspace. And to provide that security the government says it has to have the power, at any given moment, to look into anyone's e-mail, bank accounts, financial transactions, information exports and dangerous ideas. Our whole practice of governing is based on geographic concepts -- jurisdiction in delineated districts, authority flowing from citizens voting by precinct, taxes based on property in a given place or on salaries reported to and scrutinized by powerful agencies. . . . . But the Internet is everywhere and nowhere. If people slip into cyberspace covered in the stealth garment of encryption to perform transactions, express their ideas, transfer payments and export technology, who's to know what is happening? How will taxes be assessed and collected? How will commerce be measured? How will the professions be regulated if everyone has access to legal or medical information? What will bureaucrats do without people to boss around? How will ideas be controlled? For those who believe that strong government should be the molder and protector of its citizens -- well then, citizens acting behind the cloak of encryption could be a fundamental threat to government. They are enemies of the state. [...] . . . . Of course, robust encryption available to any citizen might thwart the special vision of an administration that believes that government must be the protector of its citizens. . . . . It may be a touch exaggerated, but many citizens feel like the eager young criminal lawyer played by Will Smith last year in the movie Enemy of the State. When Smith unknowingly comes into possession of evidence that a secret federal agency is committing criminal acts, he finds himself targeted in a bizarre night-and-day chase through streets, markets and high-rise buildings -- all with the obligatory black helicopters hovering overhead. . . . . Dramatic license aside, there are signs in that events are inching toward that fantastic scenario. Most disturbing were the detailed revelations by a panel of the European Parliament that the United Kingdom and the United States, joined by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have been engaged in international surveillance of the communications of each other's citizens for years in a joint signals- intelligence consortium code-named ECHELON (see sidebar; for an earlier report, see news alert!, Aug. 17, 1998). Although Attorney General Janet Reno and other officials assert that encryption must be controlled to stop terrorists and child pornography -- two powerful, but demagogic arguments -- it appears the real reasons lie elsewhere. After all, as Reno admits, international terrorist Osama bin Laden already has cryptography and child pornographers are best caught the old-fashioned way: by baiting them into their own trap. The fact is that routine use of strong encryption by law-abiding citizens and enterprises would shut down citizen-surveillance projects such as ECHELON. [...] . . . . The battle to block widespread use of private encryption and to extend government surveillance has emerged on many fronts in the last few months: The administration has put on a full-court press to block the SAFE bill. Goodlatte and his 258 cosponsors are on one side; on the other are the president, the secretaries of state and defense, the directors of the CIA and FBI and the attorney general, who all have risen up to attempt to defeat the legislation. [..] The Justice Department has sought the "cooperation" of private industry to exchange security data in eight areas of "critical infrastructure,".... [...] "The NIPC [National Infrastructure Protection Center] was established to deter, detect, analyze, investigate and provide warnings of cyberthreats and attacks on the critical infrastructures of the United States, including illegal intrusions into government and private-sector computer networks," [...] Besides, the source says, banking officials, after meeting NIPC, were appalled at the range of information the government is seeking -- including detailed access and transaction codes of customers. [...] On Aug. 5, President Clinton issued an executive order setting up a "Working Group on Unlawful Conduct on the Internet." The working group is to make a report on whether there are enough federal laws to deal with unlawful conduct and whether new technology and capabilities might be needed for effective investigation and prosecution.... [...] The FBI -- which was denied the right to require cell-phone companies to install equipment that would give real-time information to track the location of cell-phone users (even when the instrument is on standby) in the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act -- has been working with the Federal Communications Commission to establish standards which would do the same thing without legislation. [...] In addition, the FBI is attempting to collect all numbers dialed, "including credit-card and bank-account." The FBI also is seeking an enormous increase in capacity: the ability to tap one out of 1,000 phone lines in a given locality at the same time, or the ability to monitor 74,250 phone lines at once -- 10 times the number of surveillance orders in 1993. U.S. Postmaster General William Henderson proposed on May 17 that the Internet go postal. He wants the post office to become the custodian of all e-mail addresses, mapping them to specific geographic locations, as well as processing bill payments, purchase transactions and being "the residential deliverer of choice for purchases made on the Internet." Describing the post office as a trusted third party, Henderson said, "We would own the physical address and we would maintain it. All that information that . . . our customers have developed around a physical address could now migrate through the Internet and be a part of commerce." . . . . "The underlying belief is that American citizens really need to be policed," Shari Steel, director of legal services for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, tells Insight. "They are putting it on themselves to look at every citizen. They are just willing to trample all over civil liberties to find the isolated criminal. These issues are clearly related to who has the right to make the decisions for all of us, the right to make big societal decisions as to what's good for all of us. Almost all of us online believe that citizens have the right to protect our integrity. Really, technology gives us the solutions to protect out autonomy." [...] The full report may be found at: http://www.insightmag.com/articles/story1.html This will also be of interest to you ... From: John Owen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Nukes, Deterrence and China Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 11:26:14 -0700 Thank you for the pieces by James Bush and Robert Scheer the past two days. A discussion of United States nuclear policies is important to the security of all peoples everywhere. In the 1960s, it was predicted that 30-40 countries would have nuclear weapons by today. The fact that there are only eight nuclear states today is a credit to the restraint of most of the countries of the world. Over twenty years ago the Latin American countries agreed to make their part of the world a nuclear weapons free zone. Years ago In South Africa the government dismantled their nuclear weapons. Any advanced country and apparently even some of the less advanced countries such as Iraq and Pakistan, are capable of building nuclear weapons. To prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons, in 1972 the United States and the other countries signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Among other things, the United States and the other nuclear powers agreed to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as soon as practicable, and in return for this promise the other countries agreed to forego development of nuclear weapons. Every year, nuclear abolition is voted for in the United Nations, with only the United States and one or two allies dissenting. To their credit, every nuclear country except ours speaks out for a nuclear weapons free world. The United States has reaffirmed many times that our nukes are not just for deterrence. They are for war fighting, whenever conventional munitions will not get the job done. This policy of first use of nuclear weapons, forces potential targets such as Russia and China, to keep their missles on hair trigger alert. The old Soviet Union used to have a no first use policy, but due to the deterioration of their conventional forces, Russia like the United States now has a policy of using nuclear weapons first, in case of a conflict affecting its national interest. This is a recipe for global suicide. If the world continues to maintain nuclear arsenals, a future nuclear holocaust is guaranteed. There have already been several false alarms. I think humanity can do better than just to wait passively until we destroy ourselves. Don't we have an obligation to future generations that may never be born? Is the human experiment ultimately meaningless? As Professor Einstein said many years ago, the splitting of the atom has changed everything except humanity's mode of thinking, thus we drift toward unparalled catastrophe. The United States with its highly technological civilization concentrated in a few large cities, is much more at risk from the threat of accidental nuclear war, than almost any other country. China especially, with its huge population widely dispersed throughout the countryside, is more likely to survive a nuclear conflict with the United States, than is the United States. If war with China is to come some day, I would far prefer that it happen in a nuclear free world. John Owen 2506 Arthur Street La CA 90065 323 344 8084 DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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